Weekend Wrap-Up: Guardians Help Summer Recover

August 5th, 2014

Finally! Finally we have a week where there's nothing but good news to talk about. Guardians of the Galaxy crushed high expectations breaking the August records for biggest day and biggest weekend. While Guardians dominated at the box office chart, Get On Up did okay in the counter-programming role. This helped the overall box office soar, rising 20% when compared to last weekend to $186 million. More importantly, this was 35% better that this weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2014 is still behind 2013 $6.26 billion to $6.62 billion, but the gap was closed a little bit at $360 million or 5.4%.

As I mentioned above, Guardians of the Galaxy broke records earning an $37.85 million opening day and $94.32 million over the weekend. There's not a lot of analysis needed, besides repeating record-breaking over and over again. Additionally, the film earned some of the best reviews of the summer. Even better, there's no movie this big coming out from now till October, maybe November. Guardians of the Galaxy could have better legs than most blockbusters this year have had.

Lucy lucked out earning second place with $18.25 million over the weekend for a total of $79.54 million after ten days. It has already made enough to cover its $40 million production budget and it should clear $100 million within a couple of weeks.

Get on Up opened in third place with $13.59 million, which is fine for a counter-programming release. Also, because it is aimed at a more mature audience it should be able to turn its strong reviews into long legs. I would be shocked if it didn't at least match its $30 million production budget. Hopefully it will find an audience internationally so it can break even on the home market.

Hercules fell 63% to just $11.01 million over the weekend for a ten-day total of $52.66 million. The film is performing better internationally, so its chances to break even are still strong, even though it will fail to match its production budget domestically by a serious margin.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes rounded out the top five with $8.69 million over the weekend for a total of $189.32 million after four. It remains on pace to reach $200 million.

One more bit of news... Godzilla became the seventh film released in 2014 to reached the $200 million milestone. There are two more films currently in theaters that are on pace to hit $200 million, which will give 2014 nine $200 million hits before fall. This is actually one more than last year's pace and one more than the current record at this point of the year. So if we are setting the record for $200 million movie, why is the overall box office so weak? Because this year, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the biggest hit of the year, while compared to the films released at this point last year, it barely would have earned fifth place.